Article (1) Article (2) On the one hand, the Qur’an presents the Jews as righteous followers of the words of God (e.g. Q. 3:113–114), as God’s preferred people (Q. 2:47, Q. 2:122), and as monotheists in covenant with Him (e.g. Q. 2:40, ʿahd; Q. 5:12, Q. 2:63 mithāq) (see Lumbard, ‘Covenant and Covenants’; Ebstein, ‘Covenants…

Article The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus story (also paralleled in Q18) can be summarized as this: Greco-Roman Sources The early third-century CE account by Diogenes Laertius of the 57-years sleep of Epimenides (1.109; we will come back to this text) is the best known and most often quoted Greek testimony to this motif. However, as…

Article The possibility that Noah’s wife could have been unfaithful, and hence that the son could have been from someone else, was entertained by a few early scholars but the majority of Muslim exegetes abhorred the idea of a prophet being cheated on by his wife and sought other explanations. In this article, Dost argues…

Angelika Neuwirth presents a compelling argument that sura 112 (commonly titled al-Ikhlāṣ) makes intentional reference to Deuteronomy 6:4, often termed the Jewish creed, and to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed of 381 Ce, making the short sura a form of commentary on key elements of Jewish and Christian belief that gives succinct expression to the Muslim concept…

Article Q21:104-105: Biblical Intertexts and Subtexts The present example of Q 21:105’s echoes of Psalm 37:29 together with Isaiah 65:9 would seem to indicate that the Qurʾānic praxis of alluding to similar texts in earlier scriptures is congruent with Biblical precedents. To demonstrate Q 21:105’s combination of elements of Psalm 37:29 together with Isaiah 65:9’s…

Article True, there is no cave in the Quranic passage. In fact, there is a cave in the Quran, in chapter eighteen, titled “The Cave.” It contains the famous tale of the Seven Sleepers (18:9–26), also known as the Companions of the Cave (G.S. Reynolds, The Emergence of Islam (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2012), pp. 154–156),…

The sura al-kahf (“The Cave”)1 is altogether dedicated to the question which epistemological quality eschatological knowledge has: Is it possible, for instance, in the sense of an apocalyptic speculation, to make statements about when the end times will begin and the world will dissolve? How does our profane knowledge relate to the overall context of…

Mary also gave virgin birth to the Messiah Jesus Christ. Yousef Kouriyhe and David Kiltz refer to the allegorical association of Mary with Aaron as the founder of the priestly dynasty, which is widespread in the Syriac-language sermon literature of late antiquity (Cf. Yousef Kouriyhe, Michael Marx, David Kiltz, Lehrgedicht über die Gottesmutter (Sermo de…

The structural similarity between the formulation in John Chrysostom’s sermon in which he accuses the rich women in his congregation for their weakness in jewelry, and the formulation in Ahzah 33: Likewise, the formulation of blaming the community for religious laxity is also: Both in Mümtehine 6 and in John Chyrsostom’s sermons, Abraham abandoning the…